The Week the Hollow Got Webbed Feet
From the Gardener’s Journal
The Gardener’s Letter No. 04
Dear friend of the Hollow,
I am so very excited to tell you that there are baby ducks in my chicken coop!
That is a sentence I did not expect to be writing quite so soon after telling you there were suddenly four sheep in my pasture, but apparently September has become the month when Hickman Hollow collects animals.
I would like to tell you there was a carefully considered master plan behind all of this.
There was not.
There were ducklings at Tractor Supply. They were tiny and on clearance for $1…and you know what that means (if you know, you know). They made those ridiculous little peeping noises. And somewhere between seeing them and bringing them home, all of the perfectly sensible reasons why ducks belong on a farm conveniently presented themselves. Or at least, that’s how I explained it to Jamie.
This is how the Gardener occasionally makes decisions.
The Keeper, I suspect, would like it noted that this is not how he makes decisions.
The Sheep Had Plans
The sheep have barely had time to learn where they live, and apparently I made the mistake of assuming they would cooperate with the process.
They had other ideas.
At some point this week, I found myself chasing four St. Croix sheep through the fields of Hickman Hollow.
Not walking behind them.
Not gently guiding them.
Chasing them.
Across fields.
There are moments in farming when you get to stand quietly in the morning light, coffee in hand, looking across the pasture at your beautiful sheep and thinking how peaceful this life is. The total Instagram aesthetic.
This was not one of those moments.
I am fairly certain the sheep were having a wonderful time. The Gardener was not.
Every time I thought I had them headed in the right direction, someone apparently called a private sheep meeting, and they collectively decided they should try another field instead.
So off we went again.
Me following four fluffy white backs through the Hollow while whatever dignity I had left stayed somewhere behind us.
We are still learning each other.
They are learning where home is, where the barn is, where the treats come from, and that the woman wildly waving her arms behind them is actually trying to help.
I am learning that sheep are considerably faster than they look.
Rose and Little are learning too. We are still working on getting everyone settled into their proper places and teaching our two livestock guardians that their territory now stretches beyond the backyard they have considered home.
The Wrens have been watching all of this from a safe distance.
I cannot prove there has been gossip.
But after watching the Gardener chase sheep across multiple fields while a flock of ducklings moved into the chicken coop, I suppose we have given them plenty to talk about.
A Little Farm Circle
Eventually, the ducks will have a much larger world than their current accommodations with the chickens. But as with everything around, that is a project for another day.
Ducks are wonderfully useful little farm residents. They forage for insects and other small creatures, and I am particularly excited for them to help our fruit orchard after it is planted this fall with pest control and fertilizer. And once they are old enough to begin exploring their proper place here on the farm, I will be very interested to see what they make of the Hollow.
But I can’t talk about ducks without also discussing the water situation.
Anyone who has ever kept ducks knows that clean duck water remains clean for approximately seven seconds. Add chickens into the same area, and you’re probably closer to three seconds.
But what looks like a mess is also a collection of nutrients that can potentially be returned to the soil rather than simply discarded.
There is an important bit of gardening sense here, though. Water containing fresh manure should still be handled carefully, particularly around anything we plan to eat. For edible crops, we plan to apply it carefully only at the roots of plants, being careful not to touch the leaves, and just to be safe, we will only apply it when we can have substantial intervals between application and harvest. Perfect for the fruit orchard.
For us, the more interesting possibilities are using that fertility in places where food safety is not an issue, like the flower fields, or incorporating it into long-term systems where time can do its work. Even duck water itself varies quite a bit in nutrient content, which is another reason I would rather learn our system than assume that more is automatically better.
That is one of the things I love about building this place.
Waste in one corner of a farm can become a resource in another, but only when we understand what we are working with.
The ducks do not know any of this, of course. They are currently focusing only on splashing.
A Little French in the Hollow
Something else happened this week that had absolutely nothing to do with what we planted, harvested, built, or brought home. And it may have been one of my favorite parts of the week.
Our dear farm friend, Betty, brought two visitors with her to the farm, Jocelyn and Amelie.
They had traveled quite a bit farther than most of our visitors. All the way from Canada.
We wandered around the farm together, talked about flowers and life, and somewhere along the way, I even received a French lesson.
I learned that the French word for peony is pivoine.
I already thought peonies were one of the most beautiful flowers in the world, but somehow pivoine makes them sound even prettier.
I loved spending time with all three of these beautiful souls, but what stayed with me afterward was something bigger.
Betty brought people she cares about to a place she cares about.
That means so much to me.
When Jamie and I started dreaming about what Hickman Hollow could become, we certainly dreamed about flowers and herbs and animals. We dreamed about fields full of blooms, gardens people could wander through, and all the things we might grow here.
But we dreamed about people too.
We wanted this to be a place where friendships grow. Where someone brings a friend because they think, You need to see this place. Where strangers can stand in a flower field together and somehow end up talking about life and learning French words for peonies.
That is the part you cannot put on a farm plan.
And yet, I am beginning to think it may be one of the most important things we are growing.
I am so grateful to Betty for sharing our little corner of the world with Jocelyn and Amelie, and to both of them for spending part of their visit to South Carolina here with us.
Community. Friendship. Flowers. A little French lesson in the middle of it all.
Maybe that is what the Hollow was supposed to be all along. A place worth sharing.
The Beautiful Part
There has been a lot of newness around here lately.
Four sheep.
A flock of tiny ducks.
An herb garden taking shape.
Beds being planned for flowers that do not exist yet.
Places on the farm slowly becoming the places we imagined they might be.
Sometimes I look around and see all the unfinished work. The weeds. The fencing that needs attention. The beds still waiting to be made. The project that took three times longer than expected.
And sometimes I walk out early enough to find four sheep quietly grazing in a pasture where there were no sheep last week.
Now there are ducklings peeping from the chicken coop too.
The Hollow is still becoming.
So are we.
Perhaps that is enough progress for one week.
Until we meet again,
